also, movie tickets cost too much

 journal, writing life  4 Responses »
Jan 072009
 

There's a new Doctor in town, LiveJournal is facing some kind of apocalypse, a hesitant missionary knocked on my door last night to tell me about God but actually excused himself for interrupting my dinner and departed without my needing to shoo him away (and I wasn't even wearing my scary face!), I've been spending far too much of my time tracking down freeware for Mac OS X as part of the switch, and my part of Australia seems to be melting.

I think that about sums it up.

Oh, yes, and I've been reading through Tessa's 7 Wishes stories. Have you read them? I don't know that anyone who reads my blog doesn't already read Tess's, but on the off-chance you missed these wondrous little tales, do yourself a favour. Bookmark that table of contents, and hie thee hence when you're feeling in the need of some whimsy. It's like reading T.S. Eliot, if Eliot were the kind of writer who found the wonder in the world instead of the despair.

and tomorrow is supposed to be 38

 journal  5 Responses »
Jan 052009
 

Back to the gym today, which has been closed over Christmas for "improvements", which sadly did not include air conditioning. Fifteen minutes into the workout and my legs turned into nerveless tree trunks, and my face is shining like an overripe tomato. Seriously, if it hadn't been hot enough to fry an egg in the air, you could have cooked off my forehead.

Luckily, just as I was thinking the clock had started ticking backwards and wondering whether that meant I wasn't faking it, I really was about to faint, my friend turned to me and said, with slightly crossing eyes, "I think I'm going to faint."

She promptly staggered off to the corner, which gave me the perfect opportunity to stop working out as well.

Lesson the first: Drink plenty of water before exercising. And join a gym that has air conditioning.

Also, the gym staff give you really strange, speculative looks when you walk out of a studio an hour after the last class ended.

 Posted by at 5:47 pm

nose to the grindstone

 journal, shadow bound, talatu, writing life  2 Responses »
Jan 032009
 

Pledged is duly rechapterised, and I'm celebrating by … starting another project straight away.

Yeah, it's not particularly smart, there's this little thing called downtime which I hear is really effective in guarding against burnout… but this project (untitled, like all my new projects, which makes blogging about them tricksome at best) is a short story, and contracted, so I kinda hafta start it now. If I want to, you know, eat. No biggie.

I also have one (contracted) novel outline, one short story collection critique, and one (uncontracted) (for now) novel outline that needs doing sooner rather than later. It's a good thing I don't have a dayjob at the moment. When I quit the baby mines, everyone was saying things like, "Oh, wow! Two months off work. Think of all the sleeping in you'll be able to do!" I always smiled and nodded, but in my head I was replying, "Actually, I was thinking if I got up early every day, I'd be able to squeeze in even more writing!"

It's a sickness. Really.

Here, to distract you, have some links:

you know that second book you promised…?

 journal, shadow bound  2 Responses »
Jan 012009
 

Aaaaannnnd…..book.

Or at least, close enough to call it book. I still need to go through and check my chapter lengths, because I have a feeling (er, I know) they got dangerously out of control in the second half of the book, what with all the revisioning. I have a nasty habit of not bothering with scene or chapter breaks. Ludicrously short or asphyxiation-inducingly long, that's how I write if left to my own devices.

Those of you who've read Shadow Queen will have a hint what I'm talking about, because you'll have noticed the book is basically ONE SCENE with convenient page breaks thrown in, courtesy of my editor (because a) she's nice and b) she didn't want my reading public to fall over dead, or alternatively to hunt me down and beat me over the head with a book that didn't let you get any sleep because you couldn't find a convenient place to stop reading). Trust me when I say my beta readers have suffered.

I did somehow manage to add over 10,000 words to this draft. That's proper words, not manuscript-words: I added nearly 20,000 of the latter. Luckily, I also cut almost as much as I added, so the book is currently at 120,000 manuscript words, or 100,000 actual words, so right on target. (Although a 20% discrepancy between actual and manuscript count bugs me. That's a lot of white space. But perhaps the rechaptering will fix that.)

It occurs to me the problems I was having with the previous drafts of this novel might have been because I, um, skipped bits. Just maybe.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I plan to celebrate. By doing no novel writing whatsoever for the rest of the night rechaptering. (Yeah, I know…)

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